ODDS AND ENDS. 297 



with the oranges on the trees frozen solid, the leaves 

 curled and frozen so stiff that they crumpled in the hand 

 like sheets of ice, the despairing fear, in many cases, be- 

 lief, went out among the people that the trees also were 

 killed. The one, the crop, was a loss of one year, but the 

 other, the tree, one that many years could not replace. 



Add to this depressing fear of total loss and ruin, the 

 fact that the biting wind was pitilessly sifting into the 

 houses, and that all through the day, on that bitter Sun- 

 day, water froze solid even within a foot or two of the 

 stoves ; that grown persons were blue and shivering, and 

 children crying with the cold, and the pandemonium that 

 had so suddenly swept down upon sunny Florida may be 

 faintly pictured. 



Every one knew that all the injury had been already 

 done that was possible, and in dull, despairing apathy set- 

 tled down to a knowledge of heavy loss ; only the older and 

 most experienced growers held fast to the belief that the 

 bearing trees were not injured, the majority were too dazed 

 to be capable of reason or of hope. 



Sunday night, Monday, Monday night, came and went, 

 and still the bitter wind howled, and the temperature con- 

 tinued lower than ever before known since 1835, when 

 every bearing tree in the State (not so many by thousands 

 then as now) was killed to the ground. By noon of Tues- 

 day, the 13th, the wind veered around to the eastward, 

 and then every one drew a long breath, for east winds in 

 the winter time, in Florida, always mean milder weather. 

 Before night it was evident that the terrible " dark days of 

 January, 1886," were over, and that now it only remained 

 for people and trees to thaw out and reveal the full extent 

 of the damage done. This could not be done all at once ; 

 some of the destruction was self-evident on the instant; 

 that the oranges, lemons, limes, were frozen on the trees, 



